For decades, the researchers torn their hair in the face of a disturbing mystery: where were the billions of tonnes of plastic missing in our oceans hiding? The answer has just been found, and it is terrifying. Dutch scientists have discovered that the North Atlantic is full of 27 million tonnes of plastic particles so tiny that they escaped all of our measuring instruments. These invisible “nanoplastics” already contaminate our brain and go up the whole food chain to our plate.
The mystery of ghost plastic finally resolved
Imagine an investigator in front of a crime scene where half of the evidence seems to have disappeared. This is exactly the challenge facing oceanographers for years. We know that humanity has produced astronomical quantities of plastic, we see waste floating on the surface of the seas, we find microplastics all over our environment. However, when scientists tried to do the accounts, an enormous part of this pollution was not found.
This “missing plastic paradox” has finally found its explanation thanks to the revolutionary work of researchers from the Dutch Royal Institute for Research on the Sea. The key to the mystery resided in the infinitely small: nanoplastics, these particles so microscopic that they cross all our detection filters.
Invisible but omnipresent pollution
Sophie Ten Hietbrink, doctoral student at the University of Utrecht, led a careful scientific expedition across the North Atlantic. On board a research vessel navigating azores to the European coasts, it collected water samples in twelve strategic points. Its mission: to track down these ghost particles with less than a micrometer.
The results of its molecular analysis amazed the scientific community. Extrapolated to the entire North Atlantic Ocean, its calculations reveal the presence of 27 million tonnes of suspended nanoplastics. A figure that the researcher herself describes as “shocking”, but which finally sheds light on a new day the real magnitude of the plastic disaster.
These discoveries suggest that nanoplastics actually constitute the dominant fraction of marine pollution. In other words, the visible part of pollution was only the tip of the iceberg of much more massive and insidious contamination.
Researchers estimate that 27 million tonnes of nanoparticles (much smaller than those represented here) float in the North Atlantic Ocean. © Esthee2010, CC by-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Generalized poisoning of the biosphere
The origin of these nanoplastics is multiple and disturbing. Some arrive by rivers, carried from the continents. Others literally fall from the sky with precipitation, confirming that even the earth’s atmosphere is now contaminated. Even more disturbing, these particles are also formed by degradation of plastic waste already present in the ocean, fragmented by the combined action of waves and solar radiation.
Once in the water, these nanoparticles start a terrifying journey through all the levels of marine life. They first contaminate bacteria and microorganisms, then inexorably go up the food chain to fish, marine mammals, and finally to humans.
The geochemist Helge Niemann, co-author of the study, does not mince his words: ” We already know that nanoplastics can penetrate deep into our body. They are even found in brain tissues. This brain contamination represents a threshold crossed in the history of human pollution, with health consequences that are still largely unexplored.
A planetary emergency without possible return
Does the discovery, reported in nature, raises a crucial question: what impact will this invisible pollution have on the earthly ecosystem and our health? Scientists admit that we sail in unknown territory, but the first clues are alarming.
The researchers’ message is final: unlike macro-waste that we can still collect, these nanoplastics can never be eliminated from the environment. They are now an integral part of the earth’s biosphere.
This reality requires a radical conclusion: our only option is to immediately stop any new plastic pollution. Because each gram of additional plastic rejected in the environment will sooner or later join this invisible army of contaminants which silently poison our planet.
